Donna D'errico-sixx Quick Links

The cameo-driven, "Mission: Impossible 2"-spoofing, movie-within-a-movie, pre-title sequence of "Austin Powers in Goldmember" is the funniest five minutes to date in this spy comedy franchise. Then Mike Myers shows up and ruins everything.

Still trapped in a skit-comedy frame of mind all these years after leaving "Saturday Night Live," his short attention span has made the "Austin Powers" movies little more than a string of brief, loosely-related set pieces which are often 98 percent setup and 2 percent punch line.

Myers goes miles out of his way to make a reference to the 1983 song "Mr. Roboto" by the band Styx, for example. Then he spends nebulously unfunny gaps between such gags to make fleeting mentions of the plot, which in this case concerns Dr. Evil -- Myers cueball goofball homage to James Bond's maniacal bald nemesis Blofeld -- teaming up with an scabby Dutch roller-disco owner named Goldmember whom Evil has transported from the 1970s.